Blog Post #9

I believe that memory is one of the most important things involved in determining who we are as humans. It's important because through memory, we remember who we like to be around and those we don't. We can distinguish between loved ones, friends, and enemies or people we don't care for. I believe that the people we associate ourselves with help to shape us into the people we are supposed to be. I think that life without memory would suck. If we weren't able to make and keep memories, we wouldn't be able to accomplish anything in our lives. I don't even see how we could live without memory because we wouldn't be able to remember how to talk, eat, or even take care of ourselves. We would forget who our friends were as well as our family. I think that Clive Wearing has an extremely tough life. I wouldn't be able to live like that, forgetting everything right after if occurs. I think that Clive's wife is a very brave and strong person for being able to stay with him through everything. It must be horrible for your own husband to forget recent memories that you've made together or even that he is your husband. I don't think I would handle things very well if I were in her shoes. I would get annoyed to have to explain everything a million times and it would be depressing that I would be unable to make new memories with my husband. After hearing about Clive Wearing and his memory problems, it makes me think that I take my own memory for granted. My memory isn't the greatest but it could be a thousand times worse.

After learning everything we have about memory, I don't really look at it any differently. The only thing I think more about now is how lucky I am that my family and I don't have any problems with our memories and that we are all healthy. I do see my memories differently, however, because of what we learned about our memories changing due to suggestion. I wonder how many of my memories have shifted or changed because of my own bias or the opinion of others. I don't really trust my memory anymore at all because of all that we have learned. I did the Penny activity on the Applied Cognition page. You had to choose one penny out of 16 that was what an actual penny looked like. It took me about 6 tries, and when I finally got it, it was just a lucky guess. Obviously I don't pay attention to the little details, just the big picture as a whole. I think our memory as humans is drastically influenced by our environment, opinions, and the opinions of those around us. It's weird how we remember things happening differently than they actually did.

The thing I found most interesting in this section was learning about how our memory is subjective to change. Our memories aren't concrete like a photo album or a book. They change a lot and often times we remember things differently than they actually happened. Also, there is no way to 'replay' memories that we have. Each time we reminisce on an event in the past, our interpretation of that event may change. I found this all very interesting because it is definitely true and I thought it was cool to just learn about memory in general. I can apply this to my life by paying better attention and trying to remember things clearer than I currently do. Memories are very important in defining us as humans and say a lot about who we are.